


something unattainable

by 0308



Series: more time to linger [1]
Category: ONF (Band)
Genre: M/M, featuring: one mention of hyojin’s red hair, they’re all the same age, unrequited feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-28
Updated: 2020-09-28
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:27:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26687413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/0308/pseuds/0308
Summary: The boy you've loved since you were sixteen gets his heart broken.
Relationships: Lee Seungjoon | J-Us & Park Minkyun | MK
Series: more time to linger [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2078175
Kudos: 14





	something unattainable

You’re walking the way leading to the school and the weather makes you emotional. Well, it’s not the weather but that’s what you try to convince and tell yourself. You don’t want to admit the truth. That you still feel some funky emotion about the one. Or that graduating makes you feel sad and weird, unlike when back at the start of the last semester of highschool you were restless with excitement at leaving. Remember, you’re trying to purge every thought about the one. He doesn’t deserve the time you’re relegating to the-one-shaped thoughts.

So, time to think about something different. The plants around and the flowers you were passing by now is one such good thing to think about.

**.**

It was a clear spring day, a perfect day for a graduation. The start of the spring carries hope and promises of new beginnings. 

To Minkyun, it carries the feeling of his first love, of how he felt when he first saw Seungjoon, in the midst of the blooming trees. How it was spring then too, beautiful in its colours and full of hopeful notions in Minkyun’s eyes. Not anymore.

In the ceremony, Minkyun sits alone between classmates in the auditorium listening to the very monotonous voice of his principal going on and on about how this was the start of the rest of their life and other cliche things. Which was true, Minkyun didn’t disagree, but was that talk really necessary to a bunch of almost-adults? They all knew what she was saying, they weren’t naive kids anymore. The principal and the other teachers that spoke surely knew no one was actively listening to any word that came out of their mouth, and still they blabbered on. He thought it admirable in an odd sort of way.

Had it been him in the principal’s position he’d not say a word other than, ‘It is the end of the year, you have graduated. I am sure you’re proud of yourselves. There is food inside.’ Concise, to the point and doesn’t take two minutes to say. Perfect.

His parents don't come just as expected despite their promises.

He watches as others around him laugh and chuckle at jokes he never got included in. It doesn’t pain him as much as it did in the past. In less than two hour, he’d be free of this place and these people, he’d be free of all the feelings he didn’t even want to have in the first place.

He’d be free from Lee Seungjoon.

**.**

It’s 2 p.m. when the ceremony ends. The sun is right in his eyes; he had to bear it for the past hour. He, unlike some other students who he envied now, doesn’t feel right just leaving before the ceremony ends, but he did want to leave for a while now, the ceremony was extended beyond need in his—and everyone around him by the looks of it—opinion. So as soon as the principal was finished with her closing statement, Minkyun shot up from his seat and went to the buffet set up inside the school building.

Standing in front of the buffet, listening to the chatter surrounding him, Minkyun mindlessly takes for himself from every dish he walks by ends up with his plate an unappealing mix of things and with more food than he’d probably be able to finish.

Minkyun is now in the process of trying to find a good empty spot to eat, avoiding the hordes of his classmates and their families, taking pictures and smiling and laughing like they were having a great time, when he sees a head, red like a cherry ready for the picking, Hyojin’s.

Minkyun stops when he notices that Seungjoon is also there, standing in front of Hyojin, a weird distance separating them. This view looks very familiar to Minkyun until he realises that the scene in front of him is one of a confession. 

From where he’s standing, he can only see Seungjoon’s face. And that was enough to tell how this confession went. Hyojin's back, unmoving except for the black gown fluttering in the wind, seems kind of intimidating now.

He wants to ignore it all but something pulls at him. So what? Seungjoon isn't the first one to get rejected by his best friend. But he kind of wants to marvel in the sight of a miserable Seungjoon.

**.**

It was a Tuesday in their second year, the first and only time he kissed Seungjoon—it’d be more accurate to say ‘Seungjoon kissed him.’ Minkyun had come over to his house because Seungjoon was tutoring him. 

The kiss was out of the blue. And at first, Minkyun hadn’t reciprocated, his brain too occupied with the sheer significance of it, the hugeness of this moment, he had gotten what he wanted (or at least, some part of it.) for so long. But as Seungjoon’s hands started roaming between them, and he himself was going even further. Stop. A voice in his head ordered. (Don’t) stop. Another did. It all had felt like too much.

Minkyun broke the contact.

“Do you like me?” he asked, looking Seungjoon in the eye.

Seungjoon's laughter was light, like it didn't matter whichever way he felt, like Minkyun was being silly by asking. “Yeah, otherwise I wouldn’t have agreed to tutoring you.”

“You know what I mean.” His hold of Seungjoon’s shoulders getting tighter enough to be painful, Minkyun knew.

Seungjoon got out of his grasp and gets up, taking off his glasses and moving some hair from his face. “I like you–”

There was something left unsaid. Minkyun took it as ‘but not in that way,’ or ‘but not enough to let me forget hyojin.’ At that, Minkyun got up and left without even looking Seungjoon’s way.

He wasn’t very great at hiding how he felt, he knew that. It had been transparent to everyone, his feelings for Seungjoon. But it didn’t matter because he was not gonna act upon them. He knew Seungjoon was not into him. More so, he noticed how Seungjoon looked at Hyojin, how he talked about him. Even though Minkyun almost never talked to him, Hyojin somehow always became the topic of the conversation. So why had Seungjoon kissed him? 

He didn’t think Seungjoon was the type to just do that to anyone though. 

After that day, there had been tension for weeks. Seungjoon ignored him at school and Minkyun got assigned to be tutored by someone else. It was as if they both understood that incident to be a mistake, going back to rarely talking to each other, their lives returning to their normal.

**.**

Still, on lonelier nights—nights where Minkyun was home alone, bored with nothing interesting on the tv—his mind thinks back to that day in Seungjoon’s house.

_Seungjoon silently asking for a kiss and you oblige quite happily, your hands taking over roaming over his body as you rise up to meet his lips._

Would it have been better if Minkyun just went with it, without giving it much thought? No, he wouldn’t have been ok with it. It didn’t take much time to realize that.

  
**.**

Without much deliberation, Minkyun walks to where Seungjoon is sitting under the tree’s shadow.

Seungjoon raises his head, seeing the way Minkyun looks at him, he scoffs. “Guess you saw that huh.” 

Minkyun shrugs. “Wanna talk about it?” 

Seungjoon stares at him with an indiscernible expression, and Minkyun falters under his gaze.

“Forget what i just said.”

“No no, actually… I do.” Seungjoon says in a voice unlike him. It’s small and squeaky and nervous. He averts his eyes and chuckles.

Minkyun sits besides him and they settle into a silence that he doesn’t find uncomfortable. Seungjoon’s head resting on his shoulder, their hands interlocked.

After who knows how long of a silence, Minkyun asks, “How are you feeling?” That is probably the dumbest least sensitive question he could’ve asked, but he can’t take it back now.

Seungjoon turns to him. “Honestly? I’m ok. I just confessed to have it out there.” He waves his hands wildly, “Set myself free and all that bullshit, ya know.”

Minkyun nods and hums in agreement.

“The funny thing? Even though I thought I didn’t expect anything, it hurts now.” 

The weather has gotten a bit cooler. Now it’s chilly to be standing around in their summer uniforms and graduation gowns. The school yard is emptied out of people now, they’ve gone home. It was quiet in a nice way.

“I guess I still had some lingering hope that he might like me back.” Seungjoon says, laughing harshly. “Even after all these years knowing him so well, I hoped.”

After, in the quietness that consumed both of them, Seungjoon asks, “Why did you like me?”

He didn't want to dignify his question by answering but when he saw Seungjoon’s expression, something in his chest pulled and he felt compelled to. He still kind of likes Seungjoon, he snorts at himself.

“I don’t know, to be honest. I just saw you one day and then boom feelings I didn’t feel yesterday. Or at least think I did. By the time I realised what my feelings were, I couldn’t pinpoint when exactly they started.” He doesn’t say this, ‘I can’t even remember a time where I wasn't in love with you.’ Which is so very embarrassing to admit out-loud so he doesn’t. For someone to be embarrassed by his own thoughts, you live and see shit; Minkyun looks at the sun, smiling.

What he says instead is, “I guess more than anything, it’s what I imagine you to be like that I liked.” 

“So you never liked me?” Seungjoon pouts exaggeratedly, eyes glinting with mischief, barely holding in his laughter.

“No,” Minkyun huffs a small chuckle. ”I did. and yeah, while my feelings are unlike yours with Hyojin, they’re still real in their own way.”

Seungjoon stands in front of Minkyun, covering the sun and casting a long shadow on him. “I’m sorry. I’ve been an ass to you, and I’ve been thinking about it for a while now.” 

“Yeah, you were.” Minkyun smiles up at him, squinting. The sun makes it so Seungjoon felt fuzzier to the eyes—like the sun in the early mornings encompassed by the clouds—blurred around the lines and hard to distinguish from his surroundings.

Seungjoon extends his hand, helping Minkyun get up. 

“Though... let’s keep in touch. I actually like your company.” Seungjoon says in a questioning tone, voice breaking at the last word.

Minkyun says nothing, and for a second Seungjoon regrets this last thing he said. He has laid himself too bare, defenceless. Currently feeling how his skin feels when he’s been out in the sun for too long without sunscreen; easy to peel and sensitive.

“Sure let’s.” Minkyun says without any weight behind it but it still grounds Seungjoon a little bit.

**.**

Moving on. What does that mean exactly? Minkyun has been in love with Seungjoon for the last three years. That was his entire highschool experience, longing for this boy he hadn’t known at all, who for the first year he ‘knew’ him he thought was straight. Let alone hoping he’d return Minkyun’s feelings. But then Seungjoon had kissed him, and it meant almost nothing to him. Who would’ve thought, that when Minkyun got the start of a hope, thought he saw the start of a good thing, he’d fall on his face and realize what a dumb fuck he had been for ever hoping?

This might just be his ‘sour grapes’ talk but it might’ve been for the best that Seungjoon didn’t return his feelings. Minkyun was gonna go to university, meet better, smarter people. He was gonna forget all about highschool and all of its idiots and how Seungjoon made him feel. He's gonna forget how he feels right now right here soon enough. Minkyun can already feel himself leaving these feelings behind.

This week ends, that week begins. This month passes, that year runs right in front of you, then a lifetime will go just like that. Life will still go on.

**Author's Note:**

> this messy small fic came to me as an idea i had right before sleeping which was ‘minkyun sees seungjoon (his crush) confess’ and i was like hey i can write that. i did.
> 
> how do you see the different tenses/povs working? this is the best i came up with, are they working, or do i need to fire them. are they bad or are they ok? i do not know but do tell me what you think. criticism very much appreciated.
> 
> have a good week.


End file.
